Woman on benefits owing £3,500 rent can't be evicted: New EU Human Rights ruling - DM

drc

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1360046/European-human-rights-Rent-arrests-tenant-evicted-rules-judge.html

I wonder if this will have an effect on people who can't pay their mortgages or those in private rentals who refuse to pay their rent? Could be bad for landlords...

Woman on benefits owing £3,500 rent can't be evicted: New European human rights ruling could lead to thousands of tenants refusing to pay

By JAMES SLACK

Last updated at 10:22 AM on 24th February 2011
Comments (224)

Housing: Hounslow Council gave Miss Powell a home in 2007 but the following year she owed £3,500 in rent arrears

Evicting a woman from her council home for failing to pay rent would breach her human rights, judges ruled yesterday.

Town Hall chiefs wanted to evict Rebecca Powell, who receives thousands of pounds in benefits, after she ran up more than £3,500 in arrears on the accommodation she was given because she was homeless.

But the Supreme Court said that – under the controversial European Convention on Human Rights – this would be a breach of the right to ‘respect for a person’s home’.

Council leaders and the Government had fought the case and fear it may now be harder to evict thousands of council tenants who fall into arrears.

Legal experts said there was an increasing ‘trend’ for tenants – including ‘neighbours from hell’ – to use human rights law to thwart eviction.
Passing yesterday’s judgment, Lord Hope made it clear the ruling had its origins in Strasbourg. He said the ‘time had come to accept and apply the jurisprudence of the European court’.

The ruling brought fresh demands for reform of Labour’s Human Rights Act, which enshrines the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law, and of the unelected Strasbourg court.

It comes in the wake of cases saying that prisoners must be entitled to vote and that !!!!!philes can apply to be taken off the Sex Offender Register.

Last night Tory MP Philip Davies said: ‘It seems to me that the courts always find in favour of the human rights of people who are doing something wrong. We have got to change that balance, it is getting completely out of hand.
‘What about the human rights of the landlord to get their rent, what about the human rights of the taxpayer?’

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Miss Powell, now 23, was given a home in Cranford, West London, by Hounslow Council in April 2007. By June the following year Miss Powell, who lives with her partner and four children, owed the council more than £3,500.

She was entitled to around £15,000 a year in housing benefit which could have covered the payments, but had not applied for it properly.

Eviction proceedings began but were halted when Miss Powell appealed under the Human Rights Act. At one stage the council moved the family out in order to renovate the home at taxpayers’ expense, then moved them back in.

Yesterday, Lord Hope and Lord Phillips ruled that the council had not considered whether it was ‘proportionate’ to evict Miss Powell and ordered that the eviction be quashed.

Hounslow Council, anticipating defeat, has offered her ‘suitable alternative accommodation’ and she has never been without a home.
Judges will have to consider the ruling when looking at similar cases involving people who would otherwise be homeless.

Miss Powell has agreed to clear her arrears of £3,536.39 at £5 per week, or sooner if she can.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1360046/European-human-rights-Rent-arrests-tenant-evicted-rules-judge.html#ixzz1EsAv01V7

HappyMJ

She wasn't getting enough housing benefit because she didn't apply on the right forms as she was in homeless accomodation and it should have been a different form lodged somewhere different. She must be fuming if she had known she would have applied for housing benefit on the correct form and would not have run up arrears. Council did not inform her on which form on which to apply so technically they are at fault.

cgk1

New EU Human Rights ruling

The European Convention on Human Rights was signed in 1950(thus predates the EU) and mainly drafted by British officials from the Home Office but hey let's not lets some facts get in the way of bashing the EU.

CLAPTON

cgk1 wrote: »

The European Convention on Human Rights was signed in 1950(thus predates the EU) and mainly drafted by British officials from the Home Office but hey let's not lets some facts get in the way of bashing the EU.

the ruling about eviction is however a NEW ruling

toby3000

As with most outraged headlines from the Daily Mail, I imagine there's a lot more to this than they have covered. I assume the basis of it was that she should have received the benefit to cover the rent, so evicting her was unnessicary?

I love that they describe it as an 'unelected' court. Unlike all those excellent, democratically elected courts we have in the UK!

jamespir

this has been posted 3 times alreadt

Thrugelmir

toby3000 wrote: »

As with most outraged headlines from the Daily Mail, I imagine there's a lot more to this than they have covered. I assume the basis of it was that she should have received the benefit to cover the rent, so evicting her was unnessicary?

My reading of the piece also.

Councils will need to tighten up their own administration.

cgk1

CLAPTON wrote: »

the ruling about eviction is however a NEW ruling

Based on something we wrote and agreed on 60 years ago - that's completely different from the spin the Mail puts on it, that the HRC is some EU invention that was forced upon us.

CLAPTON

cgk1 wrote: »

Based on something we wrote and agreed on 60 years ago - that's completely different from the spin the Mail puts on it, that the HRC is some EU invention that was forced upon us.

maybe it was started 60 years ago but I would very much doubt that the british civil servants, who were trying to prevent genocides and world wars really thought their work would prevent foreign criminals being deported,
uk criminal having access to pornography (under the right to family life provision),
voting right for prisoners,
in fact virtually impossible to deport anyone,
views on the !!!!!phile register etc etc
Now I'm NOT saying I necessarilly disagree with some of the courts judgements but the 'new laws' being introduced were never intended by the original body.
And by and large I would prefer the UK Parliament to make the laws here.

Hereward

CLAPTON wrote: »

maybe it was started 60 years ago but I would very much doubt that the british civil servants, who were trying to prevent genocides and world wars really thought their work would prevent foreign criminals being deported,
uk criminal having access to pornography (under the right to family life provision),
voting right for prisoners,
in fact virtually impossible to deport anyone,
views on the !!!!!phile register etc etc
Now I'm NOT saying I necessarilly disagree with some of the courts judgements but the 'new laws' being introduced were never intended by the original body.
And by and large I would prefer the UK Parliament to make the laws here.

The UK parliament does make the laws here. Our courts (and the European Court and Europeant Coun on Human Rights) just enforce them and provide clarity on how they should be applied.

If you want to blame someone for this "travesty" blame the UK government!

CLAPTON

Hereward wrote: »

The UK parliament does make the laws here. Our courts (and the European Court and Europeant Coun on Human Rights) just enforce them and provide clarity on how they should be applied.

If you want to blame someone for this "travesty" blame the UK government!

This doesn't seem to be the case.

Many of the rulings by the courts are based on bizarre interpretations of 'right to family life' 'right to privacy' etc that were never passed by the UK parliament and were never intended by parliament either.

The issue is now whether the laws of UK can be changed without withdrawing from the convention.